• Education
  • Newsletter Students
  • Bachelor
  • Master
    • Master's programmes
      • MSc Accounting, Auditing and Control
      • MSc Economics and Business
        • Accounting and Finance
        • Behavioural Economics
        • Economics of Management and Organisation
        • Entrepreneurship and Strategy Economics
        • Financial Economics
        • Health Economics
        • International Economics
        • Marketing
        • Policy Economics
        • Urban, Port and Transport Economics
      • MSc in Econometrics and Management Science
      • Fiscale Economie (only in Dutch)
      • After the Masters programme
    • Application and admission
    • Masterclasses
  • Information desk
  • Study Advisers
  • Examination board
  • Educational organisation
  • ESE Events
  • Academic Calendar
  • Suggestions, complaints and appeal
  • Frequently Asked Questions

Policy Economics

Introduction

The Master in Policy Economics provides students with the theoretical background and empirical training necessary to become a highly qualified applied policy-economist.

By completing this Master students will be able to apply state-of-the-art economics and research techniques to real-world policy issues such as: How should governments cope with ageing, rising costs of health care and broken pension systems? How can the government optimise incentives in public organizations and provide public services efficiently? How should budgetary and monetary policy be conducted during the exit of the Great Recession? Can the Euro be saved and how should the Eurosystem be reformed? How progressive should the tax and benefit system be and can it be made more efficient? How should markets be regulated and what should be the proper balance between markets and government?

Facts

Below you see an overview of the key facts of the Master's specialisation in Policy Economics:

Curriculum

Below you see an overview of the curriculum of the Master's specialisation in Policy Economics:

The curriculum of the Master in Policy Economics provides students with basic economic theory and empirical tools that are essential to become an outstanding policy economist. Core courses of this Master are Advanced Economics of Taxation and Applied Econometrics. Furthermore, students can choose three elective courses in the master Policy Economics, as for example Advanced Modern Macro Economics, The Practice of Economic Policy Making and Economics of Organisations. The Master also provides two large seminars. In the first seminar students become familiar with a wide array of applied research techniques (e.g. qualitative research, econometrics of policy evaluation, cost-benefit analysis, field experiments) while discussing recent cases in policy evaluation. The second seminar is devoted to analysing one or two highly relevant policy issues. This seminar changes every year to adjust to the policy issues that are most pressing at that time.

This Master program is developed in close cooperation with the future employers of the students, such as Dutch Ministries and research institutes. The last part is devoted to writing the Master’s thesis. The best students can be selected for internships at one of our partners, for example, at one of the Dutch Ministries, CPB or the Dutch Central Bank.

Application and Admission

For more information on the admission requirements and application procedure, www.ese.eur.nl/master.

Career Prospects

Graduates will work as policy economists and applied researchers in government, non-profit organisations, advisory boards and research institutes, such as the Dutch Ministries, CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic Research, the Dutch Central Bank, the OECD, the Worldbank/IMF, and applied research institutes.